We come at last to the crux of the matter: the Cassiopaean Experiment. How, in Heaven’s name, did it come about, considering that it was initiated by two such “damaged” individuals as Frank and me? More importantly, what was the end result for both of us. The reader will discover that this, like everything else, was a function of temperament.

The fact that we were damaged and knew it was, as far as I can see now, part of the impetus, the maneuvering of the Cosmos that brought us to this crossroads of action. I had always needed to find what prevented me from feeling at peace in the world and to resolve emotional issues that might act as barriers between me and my communion with God. I wanted to see clearly that which was within, and release any hindrances to my ability to live each moment with a fresh and loving view of the Universe and all within it.

Frank, on the other hand, wanted to discover what it was “out there” that had caused him so much suffering. He wanted to obtain validation of his view that he was utterly perfect and innocent unless he was “attacked” or manipulated by outside forces.

Two very different attitudes.

Nevertheless, we were both equally invested in discovering the truth that we thought was important, though we came at the question from totally opposing perspectives.

Frank had, by this time, described to me his Crane Dance trances and claimed that during these states, he channeled incredible information that he was simply unable to express. I had the feeling that it was more that he was unwilling to put the effort into it than anything. As he had grown up, he had “graduated” from the Dancing mode of entrancement to other repetitive actions that produced the same result such as juggling balls or any group of small objects.

Frank was very anxious for me to use hypnosis to bring forth and record his “channeling”. I realize now that part of his motivation was that he hoped it would be published and he would take his place among the “stars” of the metaphysical world with a string of books, speaking engagements, and adulation from devoted disciples. Naturally, I would be the one who did all the work since he was, after all, The Channel. He would say: “The one thing I CAN do is channel. I do it all the time.”

I decided to test this claim, and he demonstrated with automatic writing. I was not impressed. It was the same cosmic word salad that’s been around for years. I suggested he needed to “tune” properly, so he settled down and agreed to listen to what I had to say.

Part of the theory I hammered out was that the reason other sources proved, in the end in case after case, to be so human and fallible, was because an initial error was made in the thinking of the various individuals who acted as channels or mediums. They assumed that a higher source could just be dialed up on the phone, so to speak, and that was that. I theorized, from the few flashes of light I could discern in the vast body of material I had studied, that an occasional truly higher source would manage to connect momentarily, or in a skewed or corrupted way, but that, for the most part, it was either discarnates who didn’t know a whole lot more than humans did, or that the phenomenon was produced by psychopathology. I studied the matter from a number of directions trying to discover a clue as to what the obstruction was, if higher sources did, in fact, exist. (I was assuming that for the sake of experiment.)

The chief obstruction seemed to be this very cloud of theoretical lower level beings and/or thoughts that apparently surrounded our realm like a curtain. My research into this area led me to the work of Dr. William Baldwin, Dr. Edith Fiore, Dr. Carl Wickland, and others who had worked directly with possession and exorcism and related therapeutic techniques. Since studying these matters had long been on my agenda of “things to do,” it seems that it manifested in my life at precisely the right moment.

There are many half-baked hypnotherapists who write lengthy books describing the afterlife as a place of great beauty and spiritual delight. The “journeys” and “destinies” of souls are explicated by recounting the most blatantly leading hypnotic sessions I have ever read. I would be ashamed to present material that exposed me as such a mind manipulator! Nevertheless, such books become wildly popular because they cater to the human need for existential comfort.

But, aside from leading questions and mind manipulation by the hypnotist, it most certainly seems that there are a lot of “dead dudes” (we’ll call it that since we can’t prove one way or the other what they are) who will come forward in various ways, including using the vocal instruments of a medium, who make such pronouncements, and who describe things in glowing and ephemeral terms. But, upon deeper inspection, it seems that there is a very great deal more to the matter than that.

The numbers of texts that have been written on the subject of the problems with the positivist channeled messages are considerable, most of them produced by research and not “channeled” information itself, nor philosophical conjecture. Many of the researchers in the field have been either psychologists, psychiatrists, medical doctors, or priests with medical and/or psychological training.

I began my own experimental work in this area with a major attitude of skepticism. That was good because, as it turned out, having started as a skeptic, I was quite taken aback to discover the reality that the so-called astral planes are a veritable jungle. Even though I conducted my sessions with extreme care to avoid any possibility of contaminating my subjects, over again, I discovered that all was not well in the “higher” realms.

That led, of course, to the question as to why so much nonsense is propagated by so-called channeled sources who are, clearly, in many instances, lying? In other cases, they are, at the very least, guilty of such serious lack of attention to these matters that it amounts to a horrifying crime of omission. In my opinion, at this point in time, the lack of knowledge about this single issue is one of the chief reasons that it continues to build and perpetuate, increasing and amplifying the sufferings of humanity. How “good” are channeled sources that do not inform us of these conditions? If anything, the so-called “New Age” movement has been so heavily inculcated with the idea that one must not ever think about such negative things, that they, above all other people, are most subject to its predations. If you don’t know about something, you cannot defend yourself against it. It was becoming apparent that there was something or someone “out there” who didn’t want us to know something. (Gurdjieff’s “Evil Magician”?)

Yes, I know that this just flies in the face of most religious doctrine and most definitely it contradicts standard “New Age” philosophies. But let me just say that, over and over again this has been proven to be so in clinical experience of a sufficient number of trained researchers that before anyone rejects the premise, they ought to give it consideration as a working hypothesis to be tested. If it’s wrong, no harm can be done by having considered it. If it’s right, it could save our lives.

With limited, if any, knowledge and distorted perceptions of the nature of the spirit world, the non-physical reality, many people leave themselves open and create their own vulnerability as part of creating their own reality! (Wm. Baldwin, “Spirit Releasement Therapy)

This remark contains within it the description of the trap into which millions upon millions of human beings have been imprisoned for millennia. I would like to point out that they are, essentially, the philosophical foundations of “faith” as taught by the three major monotheistic religions, as well as the New Age religion. In other words: Faith, as understood and practiced by most human beings is merely another word for Denial. And denial constitutes living a lie. And a lie, by the definitions of those very religions involved, is “Satanic”.

It is fashionable today to channel “my higher self” or “spirit teachers,” to send love and light without having a specific request to do so, (thereby opening a bi-directional portal where the negative energies one is seeking to “transform” can rebound on the sender), and so forth. Without knowledge and an ability to discern, one is then subject not only to the vagaries of any passing entity who hears the call, but also to cosmic laws of which most of humanity are abysmally ignorant.

Some surround themselves with light, or pray and specify “for my highest good” in their invocations. What they do not realize is that this actually constitutes permission and invitation to any discarnate spirit who truly believes that it is acting “for your highest good” in its realm of wishful thinking and earthbound ego fixation. (cf: Baldwin)

Keep in mind that we are not talking about demonic possession here. That is an entirely different kettle of fish, though it follows the same rules. We are talking about your garden variety, well-meaning dead dudes wandering in the lower astral planes due to ignorance or some sort of affinity to the earth. As Edgar Cayce remarked: a dead Presbyterian is just that: a dead Presbyterian!

In coming face to face with all of this material and experience, I have to admit that I attempted to formulate a rationalist theory to explain it all. I could see that the jungle like nature of the astral realms might be merely another psychological drama invented by the endlessly creative mind as a means of sorting through some current life issue. But, in the same way that I have never really cared if reincarnation was real or not, I didn’t really care if the fact that there seemed to be higher level negative beings on the astral planes was real or not; I only cared that the therapeutic applications worked.

And work it did; consistently, and remarkably. One of the most amazing things about it was the consistency of the symbolic or archetypal language of the subconscious. Subject after subject, from all walks of life, with all different levels of education and intellectual development, from different religions and belief systems, all of them, when asked the same series of questions, responded with the same types of symbols relating to similar issues and relationships.

Whether they were actually discarnate beings, or some split off aspect of human personality, or energy constructions of an etheric sort, which could be detected and symbolically assigned personality and history didn’t matter to me; I knew that the mind is infinitely creative and I was reluctant to take a hard and fast position on the subject; I neither believed nor disbelieved. I continued to work with the concepts, constantly on the lookout for new data that might help me to refine, prove or disprove my theory. To remain as open as possible for new information, my working hypothesis was that it was very likely that all that existed was an artifact of consciousness; the only thing I was giving a high probability to was that consciousness could and did exist independently of matter. Consciousness could be positive or negative. But whether it was, in all cases, or even in most cases, consciously conscious, I didn’t know.

Part of the difficulty presented by this work with exorcism type activities, (though that is a misnomer for the usual procedure which amounts to “discarnate counseling”), indicated that most activity that passed for “channeling” could be immediately dispensed with as being merely the production of the so-called “astral realms,” (leaving aside the issue of whether the astral realms were artifacts of consciousness). I began to wonder if there was anything truly “higher,” and if so, what it was and how “high” could one really go?

This led to the formulation of the idea of the second obstruction to achieving possible high-level contact; I called it the “transducing factor”. This hypothesis suggested that it was evidential that a truly higher level source – defined as such by whatever criteria – simply could not make a full and secure connection with consciousness that was embodied in the physical state because it would be like trying to run a 110V appliance on 220V current. If it were a “higher” source, by definition, its energy would so overwhelm any human recipient that it could not be sustained.

Actually, I formulated this idea based on reading case histories. There were many that supported this hypothesis, and there were even examples of people who clearly had lost their minds after contact with “higher sources”. Like meteorites, they flashed across the sky of our collective psychological and spiritual domains, brief illuminators of the landscape, only to crash and burn in ignoble descent. For the most part, it was clear that such efforts posed many dangers as explicated in extensive readings in ancient literature, occult writings and various Eastern mystical teachings.

There was another reason that I formulated this idea, and it was based on the observations of Nature. The one thing we observe consistently in the world around us is growth. What’s more, we observe that growth occurs in cycles. Human consciousness begins to grow from the moment of conception. Whether or not this is the result of a merging of an external consciousness with a developing neurological/physical system, or whether it is merely the result of the “ghost in the machine” effect, consciousness grows. Let’s take that as an observable given principle.

At the beginning of life, when there is less apparent consciousness, the being sleeps a great deal. In the prime of life, when the consciousness is most apparent and active, the time spent sleeping, (within wide variation which may depend on richness of consciousness), the body sleeps less.

At some point, consciousness begins to recede from the body in old age (again, with wide variation depending on unknown factors, possibly richness of consciousness), and the body again reverts to longer periods of sleep. The important thing is: we might think that this sleep and consciousness ratio is evidence of merging and emerging and receding stages of consciousness. In other words, a “seed” consciousness is planted in a newly conceived/born human being; it grows according to the richness of the environment and the potentials of the DNA parameters that are present in the body. When it reaches optimum growth, maximizes all it can do with the available medium, it begins receding. The important thing to understand is that consciousness apparently recedes because it has grown to the maximum and it no longer “fits” – its mandate is to grow, and it can’t in that particular environment. It has achieved its fullest expression in that body, utilizing the available neurological/physical construct. We might conjecture that when this upper limit, or critical mass, has been achieved, then movement “out of the body” proceeds by stages.

This movement into the body by stages, and movement out of the body by stages suggested to me that the death process was a sort of “birth” into a “higher” or richer and denser state of being that was not sustainable by the physical construct! Had it been sustainable at a higher level, or at greater density and richness, the death process might not have been stimulated to begin at that point. That this might have something to do with genetic considerations occurred to me. Just as different plants and creatures have certain and definite genetic parameters that determine not only their configuration, function, learning potentials and life expectancy, so do individual humans, within certain ranges, have similar configurations, functions, learning potentials and life expectancy. That these potentials could relate in a symbiotic way to consciousness occurred to me as a strong possibility. In other words, consciousness can only grow to a certain limit that is determined by the genetic constraints of the body it occupies.

Thus, it seemed that it was logical to pursue this line to the tentative conclusion that, a truly “higher being,” or one that has achieved great density and richness of consciousness, could not, by the very constraints of the genetic configurations of function and potential in the human body, actually enter into the human consciousness energy field and put on somebody else’s body like a glove, for the purposes of direct interaction, unless it was of similar configuration and potential as the host body itself. It had grown and would no longer “fit”.

The logical deduction then would be that, if a consciousness that was external was, in fact, able to enter or merge with a human being, or connect in a direct way, it could only be one that was not any more advanced than the normal consciousness potential of that human being, though without the constraints of space and time. This last consideration might give a different perspective to such a consciousness, but that didn’t attest to its advancement in philosophical or spiritual terms.

In other words, a dead Presbyterian is just that: a dead Presbyterian. If the consciousness can use your body as its own, it can’t be much different from your own.

I noted in going through the literature on channeling and spirit mediumship that there were certain very interesting cases where it could be thought that the “possessing entity,” (because, despite claims to the contrary, trance channeling IS possession), was, at the very least, a consciousness a small order of magnitude more dense and rich than the medium him or herself who may or may not have achieved their consciousness/genetic potential. The curious thing about such cases was that there seemed to be a direct relationship between such potentials and body mass. In other words, mediums who seemed to be capable of making limited connection to seemingly higher (though only slightly) beings, were rather large (not always, but generally). Not only that, but when subjected to scientific controls and measurements, as some of them were in the 19th and early 20th century, it was learned that such mediums could lose up to 15 pounds of body mass in an hour or two of such contact. Eusapia Palladino is a case in point.

Considering such things made me think, naturally, of the very ancient Goddess images found all over the world, where She is nearly always represented as a very fat woman! Well, I was definitely a qualified applicant for the job! The only thing was, I was not at all satisfied with the levels of contact achieved even in those cases described above.

There were also stories of yogis and shamans who, in states of meditation or shamanic ecstasy where they claimed to have made some sort of “cosmic connection,” lost incredible amounts of weight due to the “heat of the state”. That this was a heat that did not necessarily register on a thermometer was clear, but heat of a certain kind was definitely present in these cases, as well as significant fluctuation in body mass.

This led me to the idea that, in terms of channeling truly higher beings, the mode itself presented significant problems. Relative to the theorized “high voltage” of such higher sources, I proposed that the only way to make such a contact was to combine the energies of two or more people as a “receiver,” and then to attempt to “tune” the receiver with repeated acts of intent.

As I puzzled over the problem, I realized that the only real way to combine energies as a human biocosmic receiver was to use some form of communication that required more than one person and which also provided an immediate feedback checking mechanism. The obvious answer was a spirit-board type instrument.

Well, in my younger days I most definitely had experienced modest success “playing” with such an instrument, though I had given it up as possibly “dangerous” or just merely childish. It was slow, tedious, and I wasn’t exactly sure of the source of the replies, never mind how accurate they were. Nevertheless, now I was looking at it in a different way and considering the possibilities that it was a potential means of coordinating focus and intent as well as proximity of energetic biopsychic fields, with the added feedback loop for “tuning”. I knew that I needed to research it to discover if, theoretically, it would suit the purpose.

There are two main theories about how the spirit board is supposed to work. The first is called “automatism”. Automatism is also supposed to be the means by which dowsing, pendulums, table tipping, automatic writing and other movement of physical objects by purported spiritual forces is supposed to take place. What this means is that the participants may not realize that they are responsible for the movements of the indicator, but they are still doing it themselves. Conscious or unconscious expectations can signal nerves to fire thereby causing tiny, imperceptible motions of the fingers which produce the “answers”. In this theory, the use of the “talking” board is similar to theories of automatic writing which claim that such messages originate in the conscious or unconscious mind of the medium. Defined within this context, the talking board is merely a bypass of the conscious mind, and a shortcut between the unconscious mind and the neuromuscular control system. “Collective automatism” would occur when more than one person is operating the board.

So we see that, psychologically speaking, automatism allows the subconscious mind temporary control of some part of the body without the interference of the conscious mind. At the same time, it leaves the conscious mind conscious for checking the feedback, monitoring the activity, and basically balancing the effort within the controls of experimental protocols. It’s not a bad system for finding out what is going on in your subconscious if you can restrict it to that, alone. In that sense, it’s not much different from Freudian psychoanalysis.

Some “experts” claim that having a healthy unconscious mind is the key to protection since opening such a door without due care could most certainly trigger psychosis in certain individuals. I have a slightly different view. I don’t think that bypassing the conscious mind in this way can “trigger” psychosis. What I do think is that it can open a door to reveal psychosis that already exists within the mind and which, if careful analysis is undertaken, will be seen to have been present all along, manifesting in many symptoms of the body and life of the individual.

The issue of whether or not using a board, or any other type of unconscious accessing tool can “invite” possession is rather like asking which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Dr. Baldwin brings this issue up in an interesting way. Even though he has reasonably assessed so many other things, on this issue, he demonstrates that he, too, has fallen under the spell of the movie “The Exorcist,” and draws illogical conclusions. The evidence, as Baldwin describes it himself, tells us that the state of “possession” probably already exists in any given individual and the use of the conscious bypass only allows it to “speak” and reveal itself. But that presents its own set of problems. Obviously, anyone who is not trained in the techniques of Spirit Release should never open such a door. By the same token, based on reasonable assessment of the situation, an individual who has no knowledge of these techniques, who has not spent a considerable period of time learning about them and working with them, ought never to attempt to channel either in any context! To do so is to invite disaster. And that, of course, brings up the obvious question as to why “channeling” has become such a popular sport?

The Spiritualist Theory, of course, declares that the messages that may come via a spirit-board clearly originate from “outside”. Spirits or forces are contacted and channeled through the board. The Spiritualist Theory posits that the communicants are discarnate spirits or other ethereal beings who have a purpose for contacting the living. Nevertheless, even the Spiritualist Theory depends upon the theory of automatism for actual operation. The discarnate spirit is able to connect to the operator via the subconscious or unconscious mind and take control of the ideomotor responses, bypassing the conscious mind, and generating movement of the indicator via stimulation of nerve impulses. Naturally, this theory posits that, as soon as the communication has ended, the spirit leaves, and all is well and good. The evidence, however, indicates that if certain knowledge is not available, and certain actions are not taken, the spirit does not leave! It merely withdraws into the “interstitial” spaces of the energy field of the host and becomes quiescent, continuing to drain psychic life force for its own sustenance.

One of the more interesting theories I came across was developed by Barbara Honegger, said to be the first person in the United States to obtain an advanced degree in experimental parapsychology. Honegger suggested that automatism was the result of “stimulation” of the right hemisphere of the brain so that it could overcome the suppression of the left hemisphere. It was never entirely clear what was doing the stimulating, however and I could obtain no further information on her research.

The Chinese seem to have been the first to use Spiritual Automatism in the form of a “writing planchette”. The Chinese device was called a chi and it was a sort of divining or dowsing rod used to write. It was said that the spirits came down into it, moving it, and the object of the activity was to use it to spell out the gods’ messages on paper or in sand.

It seems that all “primitive” or preliterate cultures had some form of codified communication between spirits and the living. This phenomenon seems to be universal in the ancient world, and only came under condemnation with the inception of monotheism around 1000 BC. When Yahweh spoke to, or through, his channels, they were called prophets and the activity was “divine inspiration”. When anybody else did it, it was necromancy or demonic possession, or even just out and out deception. This was because, obviously, since Jehovah/Yahweh was the only god (according to him), those other “gods” did not exist, therefore, anyone who claimed to be channeling them was lying. Of course that begs the question as to why people were put to death for lying about communicating with gods that were claimed not to exist? And, if they did actually exist, and were actually communicating, as Yahweh was also, then what status does that suggest about Yahweh, since he was the one who claimed to be the only god and that this was true simply because Yahweh said so via channeling? Most curious.

In the sixth century BC the Thracian Dionysiac cults were known to be using shamans as trance channels to communicate with the spirits, or what were then known as theoi or gods: discarnate immortal beings with superhuman powers. Some scholars suggest that rationalist philosophy was born out of the Dionysiac, Orphic, and Eleusinian mystery cults devoted to the channeling of these gods; certainly much ancient Greek philosophy, especially that of Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Plato, was saturated with these mysteries.

This brings up the question, of course, as to how “channeled” information could have been the basis of the Rationalist philosophy that there was nothing to channel? Could it be merely a progression of the idea of Yahweh/Jehovah that there was only one god, and he was it? Just another step in stripping away any spiritual support from the lives of human beings?

In Plato’s Theagetes Socrates confesses, “By the favour of the Gods, I have since my childhood been attended by a semi-divine being whose voice from time to time dissuades me from some undertaking, but never directs me what I am to do.” Apparently, they didn’t do much in the way of protecting Socrates from the backlash since, in the end, he was condemned to death for his activities. Again, most curious.

The Greek oracles at Dodona and Delphi and other sites would prophesy by sinking into a trance during which they were possessed by discarnate spirits; some of the famous ones by a single spirit, or what we would today call a “spirit-guide”. Oracles often lived in caves and thought of the spirits they channeled as coming up to them from the underworld through fissures in the rock.

The most interesting item of all is the fact that Pythagoras used something like a spirit board – or a planchette, actually – as early as 540 BC: a “mystic table” on wheels moved around and pointed toward signs that were then interpreted by the philosopher himself, or his pupil Philolaus. Even down to the present day, the mysteries of the Pythagoreans are subjects of intense interest to scientists and mystics alike. And here there seems to be evidence that the advanced knowledge of Pythagoras may have been obtained via a Ouija board!

By the time the Romans had conquered Greece, the rationalist movement was turning against spirit-channeling. Cicero, the Roman rationalist whom the early Church Fathers highly revered, railed against spirit-channeling or necromancy on the grounds that it involved ghastly pagan rituals. But, as noted above, eventually, rationalism bit the hand that fed it and began to devour its father, monotheism, by further extending the argument to the idea that there is no god, there are no spirits, nothing survives the death of the physical body, so there is really nobody for us to talk to on the “other side,” so why bother? Science took the view that the whole thing was a con game, and that’s pretty much the current mainstream scientific opinion of the phenomenon today.

After working with spirit attachment issues, I had a lot of questions. As I have already said, there was an open possibility in my mind that such “spirits” were merely fragments of the personality of an individual, sort of like little broken off circuits in the brain running in repetitive loops, created by trauma or stress. (cf: Martha Stout’s “The Myth of Sanity” for examples.) Perhaps an individual, when faced with a difficulty, entered a narcissistic state of fantasy, created a dream, which was imprinted in the memory of the brain. If they then emerged from this state back into dealing with their reality, but not having dealt with the issue itself, it might become locked away in a sort of cerebral file drawer, sitting there, waiting to be triggered by the electricity or neurochemicals of the brain in some random unconscious scan or a similar situation or feeling that put them back in the same dream over and over again. The same could be said for so-called past life memories; they were merely self-created memory files generated in a state of narcissistic withdrawal due to stress. Such neurological files could then be downloaded and read by using the conscious bypass method of either automatism or simply allowing the conscious mind to “step aside” as in trance channeling. As noted, simple psychotherapy could be considered channeling in these terms. Conscious channeling via possession is more problematic because it suggests a definite pathological condition in which spirit attachment or multiple personality may play a part. In such cases, the “alter” ego, as either an alternate personality or an actual attached entity, is strong and well entrenched enough to establish a far stronger hold on the body of the host than those which can only manifest via automatism or trance and can take over whenever it chooses.

Professor Douglas Robinson at the University of Mississippi suggests that an analogy can be drawn between the function of a translator and the channel or medium. It is their purpose to step aside and allow the original author of a work in another language to speak through them. It is their profession to convey the fullest intention of the original author to a new audience that otherwise, not knowing the language would not have access to the material. In the ordinary sense, translation is done merely across linguistic or cultural barriers. In the sense of channeling, it is done across temporal, consciousness, or even hyperspatial barriers.

The crucial thing about both translating and channeling is the necessity for the mediator to not convey to the target audience his or her own ideas, meanings, arguments, or images. The translator must be a neutral conduit to the target audience of the ideas and meanings of the original author.

The analogy suggests both (a) that the source author has the power to initiate communication with the target audience through the translator (the author is active, the translator is passive, or at the very most active only in the act of surrendering his/her activity to that of the author), and (b) that the translator possesses some means of gaining access to the author’s voice and meaning, of reliably “opening up” to the intentional speaking of a person who is almost invariably other. Sometimes translators translate source texts they wrote themselves, but usually the source author is another person, most often distant in time and place, and not infrequently dead. (Robinson)

In the present day, under the influence of rationalist Western technology, the idea that anyone can just sit down and begin to channel is very similar to the idea that translation can be done by machines with no human interface. This is a very subtle point. In terms of a computer program that translates from one language to another, and most channels, we see that the program attempts to execute an algorithm, or series of algorithms that consist of gathering intelligence, charting a course of action, giving a series of commands, and carrying them out. The results are only as good as the algorithms. And we see, from the literature, that the “channeling phenomenon” as it is widely practiced, omits reason from the algorithm. There is no feedback mechanism, and thus no possibility of accurate tuning. This means that it does not allow for an algorithm that can handle the fact that there may be competing forces inside the channel’s head. Excluding Reason and the possibility of competing forces results in the algorithm: “I am the Lord your God and there is no other because I said so! And if you don’t believe me, then it will be all the worse for you!” Not very productive, to say the least.

The fact is, machine translation researchers despair of ever programming a machine to produce a translation of professionally usable quality without human assistance. In the same way, it is likely impossible to produce channeled material of any usable quality without full consideration for the competing forces as well as the application of Reason in dealing with them. Without application of knowledge and direct, rapid feedback, there is little possibility that anything other than useless psychobabble will emerge. And such seems to be the case. But of course, that excludes the narcissistic delusionals, the deliberate frauds, and the pathological cases of multiple personality. They are all out there in New Age Land, and it’s a jungle!

In the end, those machine translation systems that do work are, effectively, cyborg translation systems: they all require a human-machine interface.

In science fiction movies, we often see a “machine translator” that enables the space traveler to just plug himself into a gadget via some brain electrode, and open his mouth and automatically speak in the language of the planet he is visiting. The words may start out in his brain in his own language, but by the time the come out of his mouth, the machine has altered the nerve impulses to the organs of speech causing them to produce correct words in the unknown tongue. Apparently, the machine also works in reverse, and the space traveler may hear words spoken in the unknown language, but he “experiences” them in his own. What is interesting to me is the fact that it is a prosthetic device that turns the space traveler into a sort of cyborg translator who becomes able to “channel” foreign speech.

The point I am trying to make is that by the use of prosthetics, we are in a position to employ an algorithm that includes reason and feedback! Reason, when properly employed, posits an entire army of what Adam Smith called “invisible hands,” which shape, direct, regulate, and control translation. And that leads us to the most interesting conclusion that reason, itself, can be an “invisible hand”.

“Reason is an internalized form of ideological mastery.” Just as the spirit seizes or possesses the channel and speaks or otherwise operates through the channel’s willing body in the same way a text in a foreign language is fed into a computer to be translated, (often quite ineptly), so too does ideology and its agents – including reason – seize or possess the ideological subject and wield that subject’s body as virtually its own. And in this sense, we discover that the channel, as a “translation machine,” can become something far more interesting.

An individual who, via long and intensive study, comes to the idea that there is a possibility of communicating with higher consciousnesses, and formulates a hypothesis of how to do it, and then experiments with that hypothesis, adjusting and modifying throughout the process, is, in a sense, being guided by invisible hands, or forces of the cosmos. But it is clearly a source of some greater complexity and deep need to communicate complex and new concepts that prepares such a translator. In terms of ordinary lower level channeling, we find that the spirits of such activities “hail” the channel through whom he or she wishes to speak by appearing before the clairvoyant; or welling up like verbal pressure inside the head begging to be released for the clairaudient. Sometimes the channel falls into unconsciousness and wakes up to find that something or somebody else had been using their organs of speech.

In the same way does the Cosmos at Large, via Reason and Knowledge and a questing spirit planted in a human form “hail” a potential channel/translator of truly higher realities. The words “translate,” “transfer” and “transduce” all have the same Latin root. It is in the role of translator, that we discover that just “plugging in and turning on the machine” is not enough.

Translators must be trained; they must not only know the other language, they must know how to regulate the degree of fidelity with the source text, how to tell what degree and type of fidelity is appropriate in specific use contexts, how to receive and deliver translations, how to find help with terminology, and so on. All of this suggests a long period of training and preparation.

A Translator channel is someone who has studied these things, who knows these things, and who, most importantly, governs their channeling-translating behavior in terms of this knowledge. This knowledge is ideological. It is controlled by Cosmic ideological norms. To know, via reason, what those Cosmic norms prescribe and act upon them is to submit to control by them. To become a translator-channel of truly Higher Cosmic Consciousness is to be hailed as a translator by “invisible hand” of the Universe.

If you want to become a translator-channel, you must submit to the translator’s role of learning the language in an expert way (and such learning is via life experiences); you must submit to being directed by what the Cosmic ideological norms inform you is the true spirit of the source author, and to channel that spirit unchanged into the target language.

Thus it was, with all of these considerations in mind, I finally settled on the board type instrument as being the best mode of dealing with the issues. It is a prosthetic device that allows constant feedback between the algorithm of “machine translation” of the subconscious/ unconscious, and the human interface of the conscious mind which must constantly employ reason for “tuning”. This is possible only with a board due to the fact that the channel is using both the conscious bypass for reception, while at the same time is able to maintain constant conscious integrity. By being, at all times, in full possession of their own mind and having the ability to observe, control and direct acceptance or rejection of any material or sensation at any time, reason is brought in as part of the algorithm. In other words, used correctly, by an individual who is knowledgeable in the subjects under discussion, as well as the clinically demonstrated realities of “other realms,” this is one of the finest tools available for developing contact with the subconscious, the higher self, and/or benevolent entities which wish to make telepathic contact. And that is the key word: telepathic. This type of device allows one to create a “separate line,” so to speak, a “switchboard” where a new circuit is established through a minute thread of consciousness without giving up control in anyway.

Due to the influence of the movie “The Exorcist,” the device has acquired a negative reputation. Yet, this was not always the case! Funny how an entire “doctrine” can be created by Hollywood and then people accept it as gospel.

Some so-called “experts” will claim that being a “medium” is okay, but that using a board or automatic writing as a medium or even “trance channeling” can only bring in “lower level” entities. They base this wholly illogical statement on the claim that “no spirit of an advanced degree of spirituality, no ascended master or guardian spirit would ever stoop to abusing the writing or speaking talents of another person, living or dead.” Let me get this straight: it’s okay to do any of the above as long as you call yourself a “medium”. But if you call yourself a “channel,” or if you establish protocols whereby you are in constant, conscious control, you are, by definition, only in contact with “lower level entities?” Most peculiar. Also most abysmally ignorant.

Contrary to the above “expert” opinion, one part of my hypothesis, based on years of research, was that sustained contact with true higher-level sources had rarely, if ever, occurred in the entire history of channeling! At least not the type of sources I theorized to exist at truly higher levels of existence. Thus, no one really “knew the language”. It was absurd to think that one could just sit down, from their present human condition, download and translate something that, evidentially, had almost never been encountered before.

At this point in time, I hypothesized that the “Universe at Large,” or the “source” I wished to contact, did, in fact, have the power to initiate communication with the target audience – humanity – because it was evident, through all the experiences of my life up to that point, that the universe speaks to us via the events of our lives. The many remarkable synchronicities in evidence, as well as close observation of the dynamics of my life itself, as well as the lives of other people I had observed could only be interpreted as deliberate actions from some ultra-cosmic reality attempting to teach me the language of symbols. I felt that I had, most definitely, been “hailed” by the Universe which was asking me to undertake the task of learning the language and acting as translator-channel. Whether or not a more direct mode of communication could be established via myself as such a Translator, I was not entirely certain. But I was most definitely anxious to make the attempt to gain access to the Voice of the Universe by “hailing” back via a long process of building a circuit into and possibly even through, the deep unconscious mind.

Since it was clear that these interactions involved some level of being of which most of us are unaware, and to which we have little access, I realized that this amounted to the fact that I had to learn the language at some as-yet unknown level of my being. Not only was I proposing to learn this language that had never before been systematically studied, I knew that I had to learn how to “regulate the degree of fidelity with the source text, how to tell what degree and type of fidelity is appropriate in specific use contexts, how to receive and deliver translations, how to find help with terminology, and so on.” This was the reasoning, or “ideological state apparatus” I was setting up as the protocol for the return “signal”.

Reading through the literature on channeling, it was evident that the most respected and trustworthy material in the history of channeling had either come through a board type instrument, or had been initiated by a board type instrument. That it was a means of learning a new language in some internal place in the mind, like plugging in a translation matrix device, was evident. With the added information at my disposal regarding spirit attachment, multiple personality disorder and other pathological conditions, as well as the means of dealing with them effectively that I had learned over years of practice as a hypnotherapist, I realized that, if I was correct in my hypothesis, I could possibly take channeling to a level never before achieved – or at least, only very rarely – maybe once every thousand years or so.

But, of course, it all depended on a long period of “training” and applying the algorithm. And this meant a possibly very long period of using a board type instrument to “channel” not only one’s own subconscious fragments through their series of dramas, but possibly an endless number of frequency related discarnates before all the loops had been played out and dealt with and brain synchrony was achieved.

In the end, I decided that even if that was all that we accomplished in the process, it was still a worthwhile activity. Purifying the mind by healing its fragments in whatever terms they manifest could only be good! The important thing I realized was to not give up using the board too soon. That would be like assuming one had a good mastery of a language just because one could use it for everyday purposes. To be a true translator, one must master a new language it at the most subtle and refined levels imaginable.

At this point, I thought I had a pretty good theory and it was time to put it into the test phase; so, we began. Frank and I met every week to sit and “Hail the Universe”. I have notebooks which record every motion of the indicator for over two years prior to the appearance of the Cassiopaean connection. In the end, this material does, indeed, support my theory. We waded through endless loops of the unconscious mind, endless purported “discarnate” entities or past life scenarios; endless lost souls wandering in the astral realms seeking release into the light. At one point I realized that if any of this material had any factual basis, the board was an excellent tool for effecting spirit release, contrary to the opinions of Dr. Baldwin.

In the end, we were both quite fascinated with the parade passing before us and we joked that it was better than going to the movies, watching television, or going to parties. In full consciousness, we could peer into endless realms of otherworldly activity – dramas of tragedy and hope, despair and joy – and do it all while drinking coffee, eating cookies, and taking time out to chat. But what was really going on at other levels of being would prove to be more fascinating and mysterious than anything I had hypothesized.